Growing Up

We ought to get a signal, I said once,
to say we're grown (or growing) up. 
My friends all had their signals:
height, weight, bum-fluff on their chins
(invisible to me),
but these were unreliable.
(I trailed on all of them.)
Then someone quite avuncular explained:
You don't GET signals, silly boy --
you're meant to send them out. 

That very day I visited 
our local sweets and paper shop.
Don't send me "Film Fun" any more,
I told the friendly man.
Please send me "Punch" instead. 
Then later at my recently discovered,
smelly book shop (second hand) I dug a bit
and found the Penguin Classic, "Plato's
Dialogues" by E. V. Rieu and "Microbes 
by the Million". Job Done, 
I thought, I'm home and dry!

(The Rieu translation was in verse -- 
my first encounter with 
what I decided was true adult poetry.
It set me on the road.)

The clincher came a few weeks later, though.
A thick fog - a real London smog. Conductors walked
in front of buses. My mother met me after school...
Oh, the shame of it! My vindication, though:
my mum was lost. I had to take her home.

................................................................................
Written for Start McPherson's prompt at dVerse Poets Poetics